A city councilman on Wednesday called for a close examination of why the Department of Water and Power has not kept pace with replacing old power poles and other electric equipment.

The questions came as DWP officials proposed a smaller budget this year for the replacement program, saying they’ve hit labor and contracting obstacles.

When deteriorated power poles fall or transformers fail, the risk of fire and outages climbs. On Wednesday, the Daily News reported the DWP has slipped far behind its goals for replacing aged power poles. Its target is 5,000 poles per year, but last year it replaced fewer than 1,200 poles.

“Why is it that we’re going backwards here?” Councilman Felipe Fuentes, chair of the City Council’s Energy and Environment Committee, asked DWP officials. The other four members of the committee were absent from Wednesday’s meeting.

He talked about the apparent sensitivity of the power equipment in his own neighborhood on windy days.

“It just takes a couple gusts and you can feel the flicker – literally,” said Fuentes, who added he runs indoors about three miles every other day. “It reminds me every single time that the treadmill kind of burps and I fly into a wall, that there’s something happening there.”

Instead of installing poles and other equipment, DWP spent most of the past year prioritizing the backlog, explained Randy Howard, senior assistant general manager for power. Initially, the Power Reliability Plan launched in 2007 focused on poles that had exceeded their 60-year average lifespan. The DWP today has about 87,000 such poles.

“We were pulling out poles that were perfectly good,” he said.

Officials realized that a batch of power poles installed relatively recently was faulty, so it was smarter to replace those, Howard said. Also, other equipment such as overloaded cross arms and transformers could fail sooner than some old poles.

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“Maybe poles in themselves aren’t the priority,” Howard said.

Fuentes said he was glad to hear the department was prioritizing the work, but said he wants to take a “deeper dive” on the subject.

DWP General Manager Marcie Edwards added the department has a large gap in its workforce, making it difficult to staff work crews. With a rapidly retiring workforce, and not much hiring during the recession, “we really fell behind,” she said.

Howard made an obscure reference to union difficulties as well. Previously, he had said union rules require negotiations before hiring outside contractors, and the process has delayed the replacement work. On Wednesday, Howard called it “our inability to get those contracts out.”

In their presentation, DWP officials proposed a reliability program of $648.8 million in fiscal 2015, down from $680.8 million approved in the fiscal 2014 budget.

“When I first got here I read we’re behind, and I see we’re spending less money in this area,” Fuentes said, “and I’m still flying into that wall in my garage. ... So I’m a little concerned.”

On a separate DWP issue, officials said they were going to start collections for residential customers who were 90 days past due. They were confident enough that bills generated by a new billing system were now accurate, Howard said. Implemented in September, the software generated incorrect bills, so officials stopped collecting payments from some customers.

The delayed collections is expected to hold back more than $70 million from city coffers this fiscal year, according to a report by the City Administrative Officer. But DWP officials assured Fuentes the money would be late, but would come.

Lastly, residents who oppose a solar electricity installation in Lake View Terrace spoke against the project, but Fuentes decided to delay the matter for 30 days.

About the Author

Mike Reicher is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles News Group with a focus on government accountability. Reach the author at mike.reicher@langnews.com
or follow Mike on Twitter: @mreicher.